Encore Presentation

I’m sad to say it, but it looks as if we’re at the end of the line as far as the Capewell Glass Negative Collection is concerned. I’m going to review my posts and the digital files just to make sure I haven’t missed anything. In the meantime, I will leave you with this rather timely encore presentation considering that this winter has been so miserably cold. Below is a shot of Niagara Falls frozen over which has done so a few times, but we believe this shot is from the beginning of the twentieth century.

We also got a comment from a relative regarding a post I did a while back titled Mama and the Boys. Ronda Bolinger writes:

It is my great great grandmother Helena Evans Ross and her seven boys, John my great grandfather, James, William, George, Frank, Donald and Thomas. oldest is John youngest is Thomas. Not sure which boys are which yet.

Thanks, Ronda!

This is not the end of the Capewell Collection nor of these posts. As I get more or new information, I will share it with you readers. The nice thing about the internet and sites like this is that there is no such thing as old news. There’s always a fresh pair of eyes out there that is seeing all of this stuff anew! So if you recognize a person or place in these shots, let me know!

Thank you!

About The Capewell Glass Negative Collection

The Capewell Glass Negative Collection is a series of about 200 5-inch by 7-inch glass negatives shot early in the 20th Century by John Batt Capewell (1878-1951) of Westville, New Jersey. John passed the negatives down to his son Henry who left them in his wife’s possession upon his passing. Henry’s widow didn’t know what to do with them and didn’t particularly want them so she offered them to my Dad who couldn’t turn down anything. Ultimately I wound up with them and thought I would one day have photographic prints struck from them. That didn’t happen, but I came up with the digital workaround of placing the negatives on a lightbox and rephotographing them with a digital camera. The “processing” was then done on a computer with image editing software. They came out better than I thought they would so I thought I would show them off to the world on this site. Many of these pictures have not been seen in a century, and I’m proud to be presenting them today.

At first, I did not know who the people were in the photographs. I have a box of ephemera that accompanied the negatives and snagged a few clues from that as far as the Capewell name. I did some research on the internet and had a few false starts and wrong turns, but the readers of these posts have provided a remarkable amount of research and detail. I’m amazed at what people have turned up sifting through public records and such!

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